kicking off summer ☀️

after finishing term early, my mom and brother came to visit!! and then my aunt and cousin. to cap off vacation, my cousin and i took on south korea!

part one: kaohsiung and tainan

first stop was kaohsiung and we hit all the classics. first with the lotus/temple lake. these temples still feel "new" even though i saw them in 2022. but also the tiger dragon pagodas were actually new this time. they were closed before.

another classic is the foshan Buddha museum. this time i hiked up to the monastery part first since many exhibitions are the same from last time and because i was really curious. a lot of beautiful architecture duh but i just loved the tiny Buddha statues in the gardens in many poses.

next, was monkey mountain which i did not venture to last time but it was so worth it! there were monkeys everywhere and a bunch of babies!!!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_ff5e825740d047beafbb71553f5c1ea5/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_c515d08bb89b486a81be9e23cdf17105/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

we also hit the art district and giant mall before catching the train part way north, stopping in tainan. there we hung out on an old/shopping street and met up with my bf. we ran into a random hot air balloon festival and saw anping fort from the dutch east indies co. i had maybe the best bingsu of my life so far – CHAIIIIII flavor haha.

part two: taipei adventures

then it was taipei time!! we did (in no particular order) gongguan night market, taipei 101, the national palace museum, tamsui, chiang-kai shek, lungshan temple, huashan creative park, ximen and dihua st. the fam also wanted a peek at my school so a quick tour ofc!

part three: jeju 🏖️

ok i know this sounds bad but in the north, we didn't go farther than 15mins walk from the airbnb because our job was BEACH and dang we picked a good spot. maybe 5 mins to the best café (turned bar at night) and the beach. random food was near ofc because of tourist season. tried jeju black pork ofc and had kimchi-jjigae multiple times. but shoutout DEL MOONDO CAFÉ for breakfast everyday and the best focaccia i have had (bread period in asia lol).

in the south we did some more exploration: a waterfall, parks and cutie cafés. jeju gave us a great send off

part four: seoul

our airbnb was really close to the love lock tower (namsan/seoul tower) so we did that on our arrival night. then we hit a bunch of must dos: london bagel museum, the main palace and dotori (acorn) café. yes, you can get into the palace for free if you are wearing hanbok but dang it was hot and felt a bit weird for the both of us. we caught the changing of the guard reenactment and explored the gardens too. later, we checked out the night scene in hongdae.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/f148f6_f5edf14bfffa47dbba38edca0f319144/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

then it was DMZ time! 7:00 meet time but it was a really educational time and we had a great tour guide. if anyone needs one lmk! i don't want to get in trouble putting pictures of N. Korea here so lmk on that too. when we were at the observatory and the third tunnel (actually like all of the DMZ) we weren't allowed to take pictures. on the way we hit the gamaksan suspension bridge. after, we had lunch in paju.

left: statues of girls of the Korean War who were sex slaves

right: wish ribbons describing wishes for reunification

we also went over to coex mall in gangnam which is overhyped tbh. what was perfectly hyped was myeongdong st. it's a shopping street that turns into a night market after 17:00. got all my favorites there and we went twice haha. tteokbokki, japchae, jjajangmyeon, list goes on

just for café fever:

if you're curious about the trip or want to see more pictures (especially DMZ), i've got you. it's harder to write about 4 weeks at the end rather than during but hoped you enjoyed the glimpse :)

♡蘇晨